Ledgeview Golf Club is where it all began for James Lepp, who is hoping a return to the Abbotsford layout earlier this week will help kick-start a pro career that has had more downs than ups in its first year. On Monday, Lepp toured his home course in just 62 strokes and, for the first time in a long while, got excited about his golf game. "It gives me confidence and it gives me some higher expectations," Lepp said of his eight-under round, which was just one shot shy of the course record. "I saw some better things going on with my game, so that excites me a little bit." Lepp now hopes he can take that game into this week's Greater Vancouver Charity Classic, the $100,000 Canadian Tour event that starts Thursday at Hazelmere in Surrey.

The transition from amateur to pro has not gone as smoothly as Lepp had hoped. A brilliant amateur career that included a Canadian Tour win at Swan-e-set Bay in 2003, four straight B.C. Amateur titles and a victory at the prestigious NCAA championships in 2005 had many predicting greatness for the now 23-year-old Abbotsford native. That may well still happen, but Lepp realizes it will take time and acknowledged in an interview this week that he feels the pressure of others' expectations. "I know people have high expectations of me because I have had success in the past and won those tournaments," Lepp said. "I know people are expecting me to continue doing that. I expect myself to play well and I want to play well, but I don't expect myself to have amazing performances like the NCAAs every day. I feel like people expect me to keep playing like that all the time, but really I am not as good as people think sometimes."

Lepp was not good at all during the early part of the Canadian Tour schedule, which began with two tournaments in northern California followed by four in Mexico. He missed his first three cuts, when he fought what he called the "full-swing yips," but he has rebounded to make his last four cuts. "It's hard to explain," Lepp said. "In the first tournament [in California] I was doing all right and then suddenly it was like I got these full-swing yips and I hit four balls out of bounds, right and left ... I'd just get these random swings where the ball would just go off the map. It was really hard to play golf because I couldn't control it. I just never knew when they were going to come, and sooner or later I'd hit one over a house or something."

Lepp arrives at Hazelmere 39th on the money list with $7,211 in earnings. His best finishes were a pair of ties for 14th at two of the Mexico tourneys. Last week in Victoria, he tied for 27th at the Times Colonist Open at Gorge Vale.

Lepp, who made his pro debut last June at Hazelmere (he tied for 15th), said it didn't take him long to learn that pro golf is an entirely different animal. "There's a lot of very good golfers out there and I look at them and go, 'whoa, that guy is clearly better than me right now.' I was playing with a guy last week in Victoria and he outhits me, he outputts me, he is better than me right now. That's not to say I can't play at that level or even better at times, but just watching him play, he's better than me."

Lepp's bad start earlier this year, combined with the fact that he's no Vijay Singh when it comes to spending time on the range, led to whispers in the golf community that perhaps he did not have the drive or the passion to succeed as a pro. In other words, he didn't want it badly enough. Lepp begs to differ. "First of all, everybody's different," he said. "I have golfed for such a long time and I know myself so well. I am the type of person who pays attention to why I am thinking certain things, why I am feeling certain things. I have all this information that nobody else has and I know at certain times what is going to make me play better or make me play worse."

As for his aversion to long stints on the driving range, Lepp said he's tried that and it doesn't work for him. "I am not the kind of person who is going to go out there and just grind away at this. It makes it not fun for me. In college, I was practising tons. I was always out there hitting balls every day and to be honest, I feel like my game got worse. Maybe it was because I wasn't practising correctly or wasn't staying focused on one task, but not only did my game not feel any better, but I beat myself into the ground.

"Lately, I have found that if I just go out there, like I did at Ledgeview on Monday, just go out there and play and not worry about how I am hitting it ... I am way less hard on myself."

And on Monday at Ledgeview, Lepp earned himself something more valuable than the bunch of birdies he recorded. He also gave himself hope.

by Brad Ziemer, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007